Works By Letitia Elizabeth Landon

"[From The Duke of Buckingham]: Confusion is love's first symptom."

"Good Heaven ! when we observe what egregious nonsense other people talk, what woful follies other people commit, sure we must be tempted to turn upon ourselves and ask — "What do I do that is equally silly ?” … … Human egotism is very much exaggerated. No one in reality occupies less of our thoughts than we do ourselves. We seriously consider the qualities of others, we dilate on their folly, question curiously on the motives of their actions, and investigate all the recesses of their minds into which we can penetrate. We never do so by ourselves. Who ever sits down to think over himself? Self is the only individual we take for granted. Were the character of any one of our friends to be sketched with tolerable accuracy, we should recognise the likeness at once ; but let our own, drawn to the very life, be brought before us, we should not know it, and even when told, we should in all probability deny the acquaintance."

"… And herein lies the difference between the love of man and that of woman. In his active and hurried career, it is impossible that love should hold the lonely and undivided empire it does over an existence of which it is at once the occupation and the resource. It is in solitude that the imagination exercises its gigantic power ; and where are a woman's feelings nurtured but in solitude ? The one passes so few hours alone, the other passes so many. What impassioned thoughts, how much of that poetry which first creates and then colours the future, haunt the lonely mornings and the long evenings, when the tapestry grows almost mechanically beneath the hand, but when the mind is wholly given up to the heart ! A young girl has rarely anything to call forth that romance inherent in every nature but the idea of her lover; and what a world of deep and beautiful feeling is lavished there ! Every reverie in which she indulges is a poem, filled with the fanciful, the true, and yet the unreal."

"But, however deeply and entirely a man may love, he can only yield to its influence the hurried moment, the occasional thought. Every day brings its toil and its struggle ; and to meet these demands his mind must give its utmost energies. He cannot pass weeks, months — ay, and years — the eye fixed upon its daily task, but the fancies wandering far, far away. His soul must be in its labour : all the active paths in life are his own, and he must bring to their mastery, hope, thought, patience, and strength ; he may turn sometimes to the flowers on the way-side, but the great business of life must be for ever before him. The heart which a woman could utterly fill were unworthy to be her shrine. His rule over her is despotic and unmodified ; but her power over him must be shared with a thousand other influences."

"Ah ! if the doctrine of amelioration be true, what a mighty debt does the future owe to the past ! And alas for those who have gone before ! Methinks the struggle has been but ill repaid."

"The body and the soul are not friends, but enemies. The one curbs and confines, the other wears and shatters. Perpetual is the terrible struggle, till death parts the mortal and the immortal ; and life, the riddle, is lost in the deeper secrets of eternity."

"Some one says, keep your secret yourself, for how can you expect others to do that which you cannot ? Still, I am persuaded more secrets are revealed by being kept than by being told. You enlist a person's honour, and, still dearer, their vanity, on your side by confidence. We all desire to deserve the good opinion which we believe we have inspired ; but distrust awakens all that is little and mean within us. Why should we be better than we are held to be ? We are mortified by not being thought worthy of trust ; and there is also a feeling of small triumph in circumventing those who doubt either our inclination or our power of service. We like to show that we are not the nonentities for which we were taken."

"[From de Joinville]: No path appears so short as that which is well known."

"[From de Joinville]: Ah ! change is a great error — the variety of existence only reminds us of its weight. Who are the happiest individuals of our acquaintance ? Those whose existence revolves in the smallest possible circle — men whose daily horizon is bounded by their dinner — women whose hope extends not beyond their knitting needles."

"[From Marie, Comtesse de Soissons]: We love to talk of ourselves, but we are obliged to manœuvre for listeners. … …"

"The truth is, we like to talk over our disasters, because they are ours ; and others like to listen, because they are not theirs."

"Child of the Earth's old age, America is the favourite on whom a double portion has been lavished. The glorious sky, the fertile soil, the mine rich beneath, and, more than all, a brave, free, and intelligent race, who but must feel that the world's great destinies are yet unaccomplished, when the mind dwells on the glorious promise which kindles the far shores of the broad Atlantic ? The most creative imagination avails not to picture the noon of that mighty hemisphere now in its infancy."

"Considering what a useful thing deception is — the first and last lesson taught by what is called knowledge of the world — it is woful to observe how much of it is wasted. In nine cases out of ten, the most ingenious invention not only does not answer, but even defeats its own purpose. How much attention is thrown away, how often is flattery mistaken, and how many of our devices, like ostriches, blind their own eyes, and fancy others are blinded too !"

"… self-possession is the most provoking thing in the world."

"But there is a love that is stronger than death, and deeper than life ; for whose sake the sacrifice is light — ay, even unfelt. It is a love which, born of the pure and fresh feelings of youth, grows with your growth and strengthens with your strength — a love which would give sweetness to a palace and glory to a cottage — a love prepared to suffer, to endure, and yet suffice unto its own happiness — tried by time, by doubt, even by despair, and yet living on — the heart's deepest hope, and life's dearest tie."

"Terror dwells amid the works of man, not amid the works of nature. We tremble beside the tomb — we shrink from the icy vapour of the charnel-house — the foot walks unsteadily over the stones placed above the dead ; but the green grass and dewy flowers create no fear."

"There is something in the shadowless sky and the unbroken moonshine which mocks us with repose. We have no part in it ; our own unrest has no sympathy with the blue and spiritual horizon, whose hope is not with this life. The calm and quiet light is not of our busy and careful world; it belongs to sleep, to silence, and to dreams ; and, alas we gaze on it with the beating heart and the fevered pulse, while the thousand vain delusions of past and future cast their various shadows before our eyes. Who stands watching in the sleepless midnight, but one from whose pillow repose is banished by one all-present thought? Ambition, hate, love, alike have their vigils; and what have they in common with the cloudless sky, where the moon wanders, placid as the spirit of the good when resigned to die, and confident and filled with another and holier sphere ?"

"Besides, there is a strong current of romance in every feminine nature, that delights in the hazardous and the mysterious, especially in love affairs."

"Between the future and the soul there is some mysterious sympathy — imperfect and broken in our present state of existence."

"How unutterably do the wretched feel the least expression of kindness !"

"It is a curious fact, but a fact it is, that your witty people are the most hard-hearted in the world. The truth is, fancy destroys feeling. The quick eye to the ridiculous turns every thing to the absurd side ; and the neat sentence, the lively allusion, and the odd simile, invest what they touch with something of their own buoyant nature. Humour is of the heart, and has its tears ; but wit is of the head, and has only smiles — and the majority of those are bitter."

"How odd it is to think how differently people are employed at the same time, and how sad to think how heavily the burden falls on most ! The contrast of the lot of the few with that of the many rather aggravates the misery : — why should they be thus favoured ?"

"[From King Charles (II)]: Let a miracle have happened only once, and we always expect it to happen again, in our own case. Fidelity is very good as a precedent, — one true lover helps on the vows of a thousand false ones."

"No torture, though the human race are most ingenious in their devices of hate, can equal the low fever, the wearing depression of suspense."

"The wretched catch at hope, however improbable."

"… she had delicate health, — only those who have this perpetual interest in themselves can understand its enjoyment, — and what with complaints, symptoms, remedies, and ground-ivy tea, it was quite wonderful how time passed unobserved away. It is on such as these that life lavishes its favours ; these are they of the light heart, and yet lighter mind, for whose sake the earth, to whose base clay they are so near allied, puts forth her best; these are they who have the corn and wine of existence. What know they of the sensitive temper which makes its own misery ? — of the deep feeling that cannot change ? — of the hope that looks too high, whose bright wings melt in the glorious flight, and is dashed to pieces in its rude collision with the common and the actual ? What know they of that feverish impatience of the littleness of society, which takes refuge amid the dreams of a haunted solitude, from which it only ventures forth to have those dreams destroyed ? What know they of these ? Nothing, nothing ; and in their ignorance are they happy !"

"Yes, Evelyn !" said Francesca, in a voice of touching sweetness, but calm — not one accent changed. "Yes : and here I am happy. Whatever be the world of which yonder dark sea is the portal, we shall seek it together. It has been upon me from my earliest childhood, a longing for another sphere. I knew that this earth was not my home — that here hopes and affections were to be blighted and to die. Heaven has restored us to each other; it wills that our future be eternal. A deep and a sweet repose is in my heart at this moment, and I wait, as at an altar, that fate which is not of this life."

"There are some whose sojourn on this earth is brief as it is bitter. For such the world keeps the wasted affection, the hope destroyed, the energy that preys upon itself, the kindly feeling unrequited, and the love that asks for happiness and finds despair or death. The lots in this existence are unequal. Some pass along a path predestined to weariness and tears. Such a destiny have I here recorded ; and ere its truth be denied, I pray those who may turn these pages to think of those they have known, and their memory will witness for me. The kindest, the loveliest, the best, whom they can remember — has not life for them poured forth from its darkest cup ? — have not they known the broken heart and the early grave ? Such natures belong not to our soil — they are of another sphere ; and it is mercy when Heaven recalls its own."

"There are a great many false things in this world, but none are so false as appearances."

"How very satisfactory those discussions must be, where each party retains their own opinion !"

"There is a most characteristic difference in the way a man and a woman take to introduce a desired topic : the one, like a knight, claps spurs to his steed, and rides straight into the field ; the other, like an Indian, fights behind cover, and watches her opportunity ; the knight often misses the enemy, the Indian never."

"[From Lord Mandeville]: Wisdom is only knowledge well applied."

"Jealousy ought to be tragic, to save it from being ridiculous."

"If it were not for romance, reality would be unbearable : nevertheless, they are very different things."

"How odd it is, that any secret or anxiety of which we are ourselves aware, we immediately think every one else suspects !"

"Even in the very worst of situations, no woman is quite insensible to her personal attractions, or would willingly look worse than she can help."

"Anticipation is a bad sleeping draught."

"Strange, the affection which clings to inanimate objects — objects which cannot even know our love ! But it is not return that constitutes the strength of an attachment."

"Time, which we have no means of reckoning, is so dreadfully long."

"We waste a great deal of thought."

"Weak creatures that we are, for the body to overcome the mind as it does ! Beatrice slept that night long and soundly — the bitterness of sorrow, affection, and anxiety sank beneath fatigue. The awakening after such sleep is one of the most dreadful moments in life. A consciousness of something terrible is upon even the first sensation — a vague idea of the truth comes like the remembrance of a dream ; involuntarily the eyes close, as if to shut it out — the head sinks back on the pillow, as if to see whether another dream would not be a happier one. A gleam of light, a waving curtain, rouses the sleeper; the truth, the whole terrible truth, flashes out — and we start up as if we never could dream again."

"[From Mrs Higgs {of Italy}]: Dear, dear, we shall have no dinners worth eating till we get to England. I quite long for our good Sunday smell of a piece of roast-beef and a Yorkshire pudding."

"Domestic dissension is the sacrilege of the heart."

"Strange it is that people (unless in the way of ostentation) never value the blessings they possess. But if life has a happiness over which the primeval curse has passed and harmed not, it is the early and long enduring affection of blood and habit."

"Sculpture never seems to me like the representation of human life: its forms — pale, pure, and cold — have the shape, not the likeness of our nature. I always personify a spirit as a statue. Paintings, however idealised as to beauty, still give the bright eye, the rosy cheek, the glossy hair, we see daily. Portraits are but the mirrors of lovely countenances. Sculpture is the incarnation of beings whose state seems higher, because calmer, than our own. The divinities of Greece owed half their divinity to the noble repose with which their sculptors invested them. The characteristic of the picture is passion — that of the statue power."

"— one of those exquisite conceptions to which an artist has given the beauty of genius developed by the labour of a life — one of those forms, which the modeller may frame, and then die."

"… when a mind is once made up, it is very tiresome to have to unmake it."

"Constancy is made up of a series of small inconstancies, which never come to any thing; and the heart takes credit for its loyalty, because in the long-run it ends where it began."

"How very unpleasant a few words can contrive to be !"

"[From Lady Mandeville]: The ancients referred melancholy to the mind, the moderns make it matter of digestion—"